Prince of Thorns

The rain faltered when the spirits fled. I’d only broken the one, but the others ran too, back to whatever pools they haunted. Maybe my one had been their leader; maybe men become cowards in death. I don’t know.

As to my own cowards, they had nowhere to flee, and I found them easily enough. I found Makin first. He, at least, was headed back toward me.

He paused a moment and looked at me. The rain didn’t fall so heavy now, but he still looked like a drowned rat. The water ran in rivulets over his breastplate, in and out of the dents. He checked the marsh to either side, still nervy, and lowered his sword.

“A man who’s got no fear is missing a friend, Jorg,” he said, and a smile found its way onto those thick lips of his. “Running ain’t no bad thing. Leastways if you run in the right direction.” He waved a hand toward where Rike wrestled with a clump of bulrushes, the mud up to his chest already. “Fear helps a man pick his fights. You’re fighting them all, my prince.” And he bowed, there on the Lichway with the rain dripping off him.

I spared a glance for Rike. Maical had similar problems in a pool to the other side of the road. Only he’d got his problems up to the neck.

“I’ll pick my ground,” I said. “I’ll pick my ground, but I’m not running. Not ever. That’s been done, and we still have the war. I’m going to win it, Brother Makin, it’s going to end with me.”

He bowed again. Not so deep, but this time I felt he meant it. “That’s why I’ll follow you, Prince. Wherever it takes us.”

For the moment it took us to fishing brothers out of the mud. We got Maical first, even though Rike howled and cursed us. As the rain thinned, I could see the grey and the head-cart off in the distance. The grey had the sense to keep to the road, even when Maical didn’t. If Maical had led the grey into the mire, I’d have left him to sink.

We pulled Rike out next. When we reached him the mud had almost found his mouth. Nothing but his white face showed above the pool, but that didn’t stop him shouting his foulnesses all the way. We found most of them on the road, but six got sucked down too quick, lost forever; probably getting ready to haunt the next band of travellers.

We’d come a way down the road and the light had pretty much gone. Looking back you couldn’t see the gibbets, just grey veils of rain. Out in the marsh the dead waited. I felt their cold thoughts crawling on my skin.

I didn’t ask any of them to go with me. I knew none of them would, and it don’t do for a leader to ask and be told no.

“What do you want with that old priest, Brother Jorg?” Makin said. He was asking me not to go; only he couldn’t come out and say it.

“I do,” I said. “But that’s not why I’m getting him.” And I set off back along the Lichway.

The rain and the darkness wrapped me. I lost the brothers, waiting on the road behind. Gomst and the gibbets lay ahead. I walked in a cocoon of silence, with nothing but the soft words of the rain, and the sound of my boots on the Lichway.

I’ll tell you now. That silence almost beat me. It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment.

“Father,” I said, and I sketched him a bow. In truth though, I was in no mood for play. I had me a hollow ache behind my eyes. The kind that gets people killed.

The sword I drew had slit old Bovid Tor not twenty-four hours before. Now I swung it to free a priest. The chain gave beneath its edge. They’d put some magic, or some devilry, in that blade. Father told me the Ancraths wielded it for four generations, and took it from the House of Or. So the steel was old before we Ancraths first laid hands upon it. Old before I stole it.

The birdcage fell to the path, hard and heavy. Father Gomst cried out, and his head hit the bars, leaving a livid cross-work across his forehead. They’d bound the cage-door with wire. It gave before the edge of our ancestral sword, twice stolen. I thought of Father for a moment, imaged his face twist in outrage at the use of so high a blade for such lowly work. I’ve a good imagination, but putting any emotion on the rock of Father’s face came hard.

Gomst crawled out, stiff and weak. As the old should be. I liked that he had the grace to feel the years on his shoulders. Some the years just toughened.

“Father Gomst,” I said. “Best hurry now, or the marsh dead may come out to scare us with their wailing and a-moaning.”

“Jorg,” he said, all full of compassion. Brimming with it, spilling it from his eyes as if it wasn’t just the rain. “What has happened to you?”

I won’t lie to you. Half of me wanted to stick the knife into him there and then, just as with red-faced Gemt. More than half. My hand itched with the need to pull that knife. My head ached with it, as if a vice were tightening against my temples.

I’ve been known to be contrary. When something pushes me, I shove back. Even if the one doing the pushing is me. It would have been easy to gut him then and there. Satisfying. But the need was too urgent. I felt pushed.

And old Gomsty, though he was stiff from the cage, and sore in every limb, bowed his head to hear my confession.

I spoke into the rain, low and quiet. Loud enough for Father Gomst though, and loud enough for the dead who haunted the marsh about us. I told of the things I’d done. I told of the things I would do. In a soft voice I told my plans to all with ears to hear. The dead left us then.

“If that’s what it takes.” I didn’t dispute him. “But I’ve confessed, and you must forgive me.”

Father Gomst found his wits at last, but still he held back. “What do you want with me, Lucifer?”

“Some men I can bind with who I am. Some I can bind with where I’m going. Others need to know who walks with me. I’ve given you my confession. I repent. Now God walks with me, and you’re the priest who will tell the faithful that I am His warrior, His instrument, the Sword of the Almighty.”

We walked back along the path then, and reached the others by and by. Makin had them lined up and ready. Waiting in the dark, with a single torch, and the hooded lantern hung up on the head-cart.

“Captain Bortha,” I said to Makin, “time we set off. We’ve got a ways before us till we reach the Horse Coast.”

Maybe it was something to do with having an old ghost haunt its way through to the very marrow of my bones, but today my headaches felt more like somebody prodding me with a stick, herding me along, and it was really beginning to fuck me off.

“I think we will call in at the Tall Castle.” I ground my teeth together against the daggers in my head. “Hand old Gomsty here over in person. I’m sure my father has been worried about me.”

Rike and Maical gave me stupid stares. Fat Burlow and Red Kent swapped glances. The Nuban rolled his eyes and made his wards.

I looked at Makin, tall, broad in the shoulder, black hair plastered down by the rain. He’s my knight, I thought. Gomst is my bishop, the Tall Castle my rook. Then I thought of Father. I needed a king. You can’t play the game without a king. I thought of Father, and it felt good. After the dead one, I’d begun to wonder. The dead one showed me his hell, and I had laughed at it. But now I thought of Father, and it felt good to know I could still feel fear.